European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Nick Clegg Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

I had hoped to speak at the end of the debate, but it may be of assistance to the Committee if I deal with some of the matters that the shadow Secretary of State touched on. However, I do not want to go into the details of the various amendments that other hon. Members will no doubt wish to speak to. With your consent, Ms Engel, I will address them briefly at the end of the debate.

May I first repeat what I said to the shadow Secretary of State when I intervened on him a few moments ago? The Government have repeatedly committed from the Dispatch Box to a vote in both Houses on the final deal before it comes into force. That, I repeat and confirm, will cover not only the withdrawal agreement but the future arrangement that we propose with the European Union. I confirm again that the Government will bring forward a motion on the final agreement—

[Mr Nick Clegg (Sheffield, Hallam) (LD)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Jones]

I will just finish the sentence, because it is rather important. The Government will bring forward a motion on the final agreement to be approved by both Houses of Parliament before it is concluded, and we expect and intend that that will happen before the European Parliament debates and votes on the final agreement.

[Mr Clegg]

Will the Minister stress to the Committee again that that applies to both the withdrawal agreement and a final agreement on the future relationship between the UK and the EU? It is my view, which is shared by many others, that the former is feasible within two years but the latter is highly unlikely. What will happen if a withdrawal agreement is reached but not a new agreement between the UK and the EU?

[Mr Jones]

I must preface what I am about to say by saying that we do not expect that we will not achieve such an agreement, but my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has already made it clear that if we cannot come to an agreement, we will have to fall back on other arrangements. The Government have consistently been clear about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Redwood]

I support the Government offering this House a vote. They cannot deny the House a vote—if the House wants to vote, the House will vote—but it is very important that those who want to go further and press the Government even more should understand that this approach could be deeply damaging to the United Kingdom’s negotiating position. It is based on a completely unreal view of how multinational negotiations go when a country is leaving the European Union. I find it very disappointing that passionate advocates of the European Union in this House, who have many fine contacts and networks across our continent, as well as access to the counsel and the wisdom of our European partners, give no explanation in these debates of the attitudes of the other member states, the weaknesses of their negotiating position and what their aims might be. If they did so, they could better inform the Government’s position, meaning that we could do better for them and for us.

[Mr Clegg]

The right hon. Gentleman is, as ever, making an articulate case from his point of view about the dangers of a vote at the end of the process. Can he explain why, on 20 November 2012, in a very interesting blogpost entitled, “The double referendum on the EU”, he advocated a second referendum with the following question:

“Do you want to accept the new negotiated relationship with the EU or not?”?

How on earth and why on earth has he changed his mind since then?

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Nick Clegg Excerpts

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 13th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

I want to close by saying this, Mr Speaker. The idea that, by doing the right thing and allowing us to have a vote and a say in the event of no deal, we would somehow be weakening the Prime Minister’s negotiating hand is absolutely perverse. It is as though all these deliberations and all the divisions that still exist in our country are not being reported throughout the whole of Europe. It is as though all this is taking place in some kind of silence. Everyone in Europe knows how divided our nation is. They know about the deliberations in this place and in the other place. They also know that, of those who voted, only 52% voted for us to leave the European Union. I urge the Government, for the sake of bringing unity not only to our party but to the country at large, to allow Parliament’s sovereignty to reign and, in the event of no deal, to allow us to have a vote and a say.

[Mr Nick Clegg (Sheffield, Hallam) (LD)]

I must declare an interest, because the political is personal for me on the issue of EU citizens in the United Kingdom, as I suspect it is for many other Members in this House. The two most important women in my life—my mother, who is Dutch, and my wife, who is Spanish—are directly affected by this. While they are of course special to me, I none the less think that their fate, and the uncertainty that they have endured, is typical of the constituents of many across the House. My mother has lived here for more than 50 years. She has raised four children. She has worked as a teacher. She has paid her taxes. My wife loves this country—most of the time. She does not love the weather, but she loves this country. She is raising children, paying taxes, and working as a lawyer. It simply beggars belief that people like them and millions of others have had a question mark placed over their status, their piece of mind, and their wellbeing in our great country because of the action, or rather the shameful inaction, of this Government.

[John Redwood]

The question mark has been placed there by the EU, not by this Government. If the EU said today that our citizens abroad are safe, all EU citizens here would be safe.

[Mr Clegg]

The right hon. Gentleman would start blaming bad traffic on the EU if he could. It is absurd. We picked the fight, not the EU. His party picked the fight; the EU did not.

I have one observation that I want to press the Secretary of State on. Even if he gets the deal on the issue of EU citizens here and UK citizens there, which I sincerely believe he wishes to seek, and even if that goes as smoothly and quickly as he has suggested today, there is no earthly way that this Government can separate the 3 million EU citizens who are already here from the millions who may, after a certain cut-off date, want to live, study, and work here without creating a mountainous volume of red tape.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Clegg]

Remind me, was freeing ourselves from red tape not one of the principal reasons why the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) and so many others told us that we should leave the European Union? Yet this Government are going to create a tsunami of red tape, which EU citizens, including my mum and my wife, will rightly resent just as much as this Government have always resented red tape in Brussels. The particular irony is that the Secretary of State and I worked closely together in this Chamber as Opposition party spokespeople 12 years against the then Government’s attempts to impose ID cards, yet I predict that he and his Government will have to introduce something not identical but strikingly similar to the paper trail behind ID cards.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

rose—

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Clegg]

I must make progress; there is very little time.

Turning to the other, perhaps more meaningful amendment, the double standards that we have just heard about red tape are duplicated several times over by the double standards of Brexiteers saying, “We should free ourselves”—at any cost—“from the lack of democratic accountability in Brussels,” when the first thing they do is undermine and weaken the principle of democratic accountability in this House. I have listened closely to the Government’s case for rejecting that amendment, including today, and there is no first principle argument against it, because they concede to the principle of a vote; they just do not like us having the freedom to decide what that vote should be on.

The Government have come up with laughable arguments, which we have heard repeated here today, including that if we have just the bog-standard, plain vanilla accountability exerted by the House of Commons and the other place on any announcement made by the Prime Minister in two years, that will serve as an incentive for the EU to give us a bad deal. By that logic, the only Governments who can successfully negotiate good international agreements are dictatorships. They are not; they are democracies. Democracy can co-exist with good international agreements.

I have come to the conclusion that the reason the Government are digging their heels in as stubbornly as they are is that they somehow think that they will strut their stuff and impress our soon-to-be EU negotiating partners by indulging in parliamentary and procedural machismo here. Who do they think they are kidding? Do they think that Angela Merkel has put everything aside to look at this debate this afternoon? Do they think that she has said, “Oh, look at the way that No. 10 unceremoniously evicted Lord Heseltine and other venerable parliamentarians from their jobs. We had better give them a good deal”?

Does the Secretary of State think that Michel Barnier, whom I know well and know the Secretary of State knows well—a hardened EU negotiator if ever there was one—is saying, “Oh well, we’d better lower the price tag because they are being so tough with their own people”? It is a ludicrous assertion. So I simply say to Government Members, at this last, 59th second of the eleventh hour of this debate on these amendments: stubbornness can be a sign of suspicion and weakness, not strength; rejecting the rightful, conventional role of the House of Commons and the other place to apply democratic accountability to the actions and decisions of the Executive can be a sign of weakness, not strength; and this specious argument that condemns the lack of democratic accountability in Brussels while undermining it here, in the mother of all Parliaments, is a sleight of hand that should not be lightly forgotten.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

It is a particular pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg), as he and I spent a number of years working together in coalition government. I know that was not enormously fruitful for all those on my side, but I thank him for his remarks.

Let me deal with one opening point and then refer to the amendments, rather than making a general speech. One observation to make, which comes back to the right hon. Gentleman’s point about process, is that we sent to the House of Lords a short, well drafted and tightly focused Bill. Usually, the House of Lords argument and its criticism of this House is that we send it long, badly drafted and ill thought through legislation, which the House of Lords then has to improve. In this case, we sent the other place a short, tightly focused, well drafted Bill that does one very specific thing; it then made the Bill longer and reduced the quality of the drafting. We should help their lordships out this afternoon by getting rid of their poorly drafted amendments and sending the Bill back to them in the same expertly drafted form in which it started.